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Vet Overland Zones
Zerowaffles
✭✭✭
The way Zenimax approached one tamriel by scaling all the mobs to be killable by any player has made the game considerably too easy.
I tried testing to see how challenging the game is to new players by making a lvl 1 character without champion points and to my surprise I was almost one shotting every mob in Vvardenfell.
The lack of challenge even on early levels might drive away new players. Even though Eso is expanding by getting new players some of them stop because the overland zones are too easy.
The only real challenge comes after during vet dungeons/trials and pvp.
So I'm suggesting to scale up a bit the overland zones to be a bit harder but also have a different veteran instance for high level players.
I personally felt underwhelmed when I was questing in Vvardenfell and Summerset on my main because I can literally one shot everything at cp750.
I know the game used to be worse back when we had veteran ranks but the challenge in overland zones was there and just thinking about the old eso days makes me nostalgic.
I tried testing to see how challenging the game is to new players by making a lvl 1 character without champion points and to my surprise I was almost one shotting every mob in Vvardenfell.
The lack of challenge even on early levels might drive away new players. Even though Eso is expanding by getting new players some of them stop because the overland zones are too easy.
The only real challenge comes after during vet dungeons/trials and pvp.
So I'm suggesting to scale up a bit the overland zones to be a bit harder but also have a different veteran instance for high level players.
I personally felt underwhelmed when I was questing in Vvardenfell and Summerset on my main because I can literally one shot everything at cp750.
I know the game used to be worse back when we had veteran ranks but the challenge in overland zones was there and just thinking about the old eso days makes me nostalgic.
7
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Tasear✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Playing devil advocate did you use food? How is your gear or rotation? How did you distrub champion points? Is easier on any class over other?
Now how would you like vet overland? Would it be added to activity finder? Would you use it for quests, bosses, dolmens, public dungeons? What would your vet overland feel and look like?1 -
Zerowaffles✭✭✭Playing devil advocate did you use food? How is your gear or rotation? How did you distrub champion points? Is easier on any class over other?
Now how would you like vet overland? Would it be added to activity finder? Would you use it for quests, bosses, dolmens, public dungeons? What would your vet overland feel and look like?
They should treat it as a different instance when a entering said zone. The zone chat would be nice if it was shared on both normal and vet instances though so people who lfg,wtb or wts reach out to everyone.
Before saying this isn't possible might I digress.. The feature is already in the game. If you complete a quest that changes a town or city considerably you get placed in a different instance for that certain area but you can still see invisible players with nameplates in a different instance who haven't done that quest.
This should work similary to vet and normal instances.
Now about your other questions.. I used a newly created warden with no food and by simply not allocating my champion ponts. My gear were simply rewarded by quests or found on the ground or dropped by mobs.0 -
Aesthier✭✭✭✭✭Simplest fix:
Implement a hardcore character mode at the character select screen which enabled veterans to create a toon that would suffer a permanent debuff that reduces all stats by a certain percentage on that specific character.
They could still play with their friends while enjoying the increased difficulty of "all" content.
Hell ZoS could even implement new titles for those who complete certain content using said toons.
This makes much more sense than creating new servers or implementing some type of toggle for players which lends itself to more breakage.
Just a simple lifetime debuff that is applied to the character on creation.0 -
TheShadowScout✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭It is an issue, but balancing things so they are not too hard for complete newcomers with no gaming skills and not completely boring for those who know what they are going... well, I reckon it ain't easy.
And we know the battle levelling favors new characters, in the thought that newbies need the extra edge to not get frustrated...
Still, there are things that could be done there.
One thing I would like to see is bringing back some sort of softcaps to put an end to those insanely high damage outputs that let people one-shot mobs, and applying them from the start. Less effect from stats to damage, more effect from stats to health and resources, to make character hit less hard but have more staying power, to the fights last longer as well... (and softcaps because that also would make hybrid characters more viable again, which I consider a good thing)
Another possibility is adding some "handicap" selector where players can debuff their characters but gain some extra reward (stuff they might actually want, like increased set item or crafting material/motiv drop chances, not just additional white items or such)0 -
MrSensible✭✭✭Honestly, I think the right move would be a local difficulty slider. This wouldn't even be difficult to do. Just a slider that increases your damage received and reduces your damage output. Again. Locally. Designed for SOLO play. Designed for tackling SOLO content. Effects NO ONE ELSE BUT YOU.
The game already has systems in place to invoke something like this (battlegrounds use a debuff which reduces damage dealt and healing received). Just apply this same debuff outside combat for PVE overland content (with a scaling multiplier, do you want your damage reduced by 50% or by 45% or 0%?)
*Doesn't effect anyone but you.
*Isn't active in dungeons and trials.
*Easy to implement.
*Doesn't split the population.
I have no idea why this isn't in the game already.Edited by MrSensible on June 16, 2018 1:11PM2 -
frostz417✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Just make the overland mobs/quest scale to the group or individuals level. I love this concept though, I find it awesome how some games have certain zones where it’s known to have extremely difficult monsters. Such as craglorn back in the day, nobody would dare go there unless they were in a group. That’ would make the game so much more fun, especially for beginners. Imagine hearing others talk about this certain zone that has incredible difficult monsters and you’re a new player who sticks to the easier zones. You’ll see this zone as some sort of mysterious and dangerous place to test your skills etc etc.3 -
Zerowaffles✭✭✭Would you ever use a tank or healer in overland?
It really depends how zos approaches this. The only way a healer and a tank would be viable in an overland zone is if they added bosses or some group content that required all roles to be present.
But the question is what would drive the players to group up and do group content in overland zones? There would have to be big enough rewards to enable people to group up with tanks and healers.
Surely item sets wont solve this issue.
Maybe a bigger reward like a motif.. a pet or even a mount..
Cosmetics is what always drives the playerbase to grind.
And to answer to your question.. Yes I would try a healer and a tank in an overland zone if I felt like I was being useful to others.
1 -
starkerealm✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Simplest fix:
Implement a hardcore character mode at the character select screen which enabled veterans to create a toon that would suffer a permanent debuff that reduces all stats by a certain percentage on that specific character.
They could still play with their friends while enjoying the increased difficulty of "all" content.
Hell ZoS could even implement new titles for those who complete certain content using said toons.
This makes much more sense than creating new servers or implementing some type of toggle for players which lends itself to more breakage.
Just a simple lifetime debuff that is applied to the character on creation.
I like the idea, but, unfortunately, it wouldn't work.
The problem is when you'd take a character with the hardcore debuff into vet content. Because that debuff would become persona non grata for progression runs. So, the irony is, the very group that's asking for this would never touch a system like that. Because why would you ever take someone into a vet trial on a character when they would be seriously disadvantaged at their role?
Additionally, let's be honest here, it's not the player stats. Even if you're doing something like outright halfing all of the character's stats, even just a player who's earned Mage Slayer a couple times isn't going to blink at the new difficulty. It'll be the same zones, with everything slowed down even further. That's... not fun.
When you can burst for +40k, simply adding a stat penalty is not going to make content more difficult.
I do think it's possible to beef up overland content so it's more engaging for veterans. Like adding more conditional attack patterns to enemies, based on their target's CP, or maybe even buff/debuff mutators you could apply somewhere for that zone. But, simply applying a set of penalties wouldn't do the trick.0 -
frostz417✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭
It really depends how zos approaches this. The only way a healer and a tank would be viable in an overland zone is if they added bosses or some group content that required all roles to be present.
But the question is what would drive the players to group up and do group content in overland zones? There would have to be big enough rewards to enable people to group up with tanks and healers.
Surely item sets wont solve this issue.
Maybe a bigger reward like a motif.. a pet or even a mount..
Cosmetics is what always drives the playerbase to grind.
And to answer to your question.. Yes I would try a healer and a tank in an overland zone if I felt like I was being useful to others.
[/quote]
If they made overland content require a tank/healer making groups necessary and also added cosmetic rewards that would be such an amazing idea. I would love that so much.
Going into overland content having to fight challenging monsters that actually require a group
#makeithappenzosplz0 -
AuldWolf✭✭✭✭✭Sigh. Again. Really? Again? Again?
Well, I suppose if you've lost the argument in at least ten other threads, just try posting it again and spinning it a different way. The thing is is that this battle is lost. Please stop. Just take the argument to a different game. ZOS isn't interested. I'll explain why.
Harder Overland Zone -- Craglorn
Craglorn was ZOS's experiment with a more difficult zone. It was a disaster. It was a ghost town, never populated. No one played it. It had to be retooled to be more casual because no one played it. You never saw anyone in it.
Veteran Zones - Cadwell's Gold/Silver
Tried this, too. Guess what? Ghost town. No one played it. Your demographic seems to be around <200 players if I had to estimate based upon how many people actually turn up to play this content. This is versus the rest of the playerbase.
Other evidence?
Wildstar: Hardcore zones, dead on arrival. Devs are redesigning it to be more casual.
Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns: Almost killed ArenaNet, cash shop purchases dried up really fast. They had to issue a public apology and redesign the expansion to be casual.
Battleborn: Attracted a casual audience. Its developer couldn't let go of their hardcore eSports dream, now it's on life support.
Consider all of the above. ZOS isn't staffed by oblivious people. They're aware of failures like Wildstar and Heart of Thorns, they're also aware of their own failed hardcore experiments and chose a different path.
ZOS has already chosen to not cater to the hardcore with anything other than trials.
Take this to another game, please?
How many more threads are you going to make? Could the next one have a poll so we could make it painfully clear to you again?
Please. There have been so many threads about this, so much spin, so much nonsense.
The statistics say that this is financial suicide for any developer.
A developer needs money.
Harcore people do not pay anything more than the bare minimum (they see it as a job and it's the developer's purpose to reward them, rather than the other way around).
Casual players love to financially support games.
This would be bad for ZOS. ZOS knows this.
I'm trying to put this as simply as possible.
It's time to stop this.
Over 10 threads should be enough. Or do we need to go for 50? 100? What's the cut off point, here?3 -
starkerealm✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Sigh. Again. Really? Again? Again?
Well, I suppose if you've lost the argument in at least ten other threads, just try posting it again and spinning it a different way. The thing is is that this battle is lost. Please stop. Just take the argument to a different game. ZOS isn't interested. I'll explain why.
Harder Overland Zone -- Craglorn
Craglorn was ZOS's experiment with a more difficult zone. It was a disaster. It was a ghost town, never populated. No one played it. It had to be retooled to be more casual because no one played it. You never saw anyone in it.
Not after IC dropped anyway. I know you've said it stayed V14 for months after the cap went to 16, but I don't think that's true. As I recall, Craglorn was never upgraded from 14, until One Tamriel. It's just that sometime around TG, the trials got upgraded to 16.Veteran Zones - Cadwell's Gold/Silver
Tried this, too. Guess what? Ghost town. No one played it. Your demographic seems to be around <200 players if I had to estimate based upon how many people actually turn up to play this content. This is versus the rest of the playerbase.
I'll be honest, I kinda liked the peace of the silver and gold zones. That said, I suspect they contributed significantly to a perception that the game was dying, because you'd hit anything after your first Silver zone and the place would be deserted until you hit the V10 zone. In between, people would run the content once, and be done. So you had a vanishingly small chunk of the population who didn't stick around in those zones. Still, it did have a cool feel, though wandering through an abandoned Wayrest now is actually kinda creepy.
0 -
Kuwhar✭✭✭✭No.
If you are going to present a problem you deem worthy of attention, dont misrepresent it.
I bet 5k gold you are not almost 1 shotting mobs in vvardenfell on this new character.
Show me a video of that and you get 5k goldEdited by Kuwhar on June 16, 2018 4:59PM1 -
haelene✭✭✭✭✭
✭Zerowaffles wrote: »...I tried testing to see how challenging the game is to new players...
No.
No veteran player can't possibly test to see how challenging a game is to new players for one simple reason - they're not new.
You know the systems. You know what skills to use, in what order, and you already have the muscle memory down. No matter what "disadvantage" you give yourself, you still have the two largest advantages out there. Knowledge and experience.
Also, you're operating under the assumption that new players play like you do and want a challenge. I'd wager most don't and that harder difficulty in starter areas would do the opposite of what you say and drive now people away.
For the most part, overland isn't for you. It isn't for me (except for maybe when I want to relax and just murder everything I see with ease). Stop trying to take it over.
What we need is an intermediate area to help people make the jump to the harder content (if they want to - keep in mind, there's a reason the hard core community is small) and more veteran content - not to change what already exists for the newbies.
I would agree that they need to stop making new starter areas though. Start real newbies with the original MQ, and give people who've already done it a choice to stay there or in the new areas.
Edited to fix my phone's auto correct.Edited by haelene on June 16, 2018 5:19PM4 -
Zerowaffles✭✭✭Sigh. Again. Really? Again? Again?
Well, I suppose if you've lost the argument in at least ten other threads, just try posting it again and spinning it a different way. The thing is is that this battle is lost. Please stop. Just take the argument to a different game. ZOS isn't interested. I'll explain why.
Harder Overland Zone -- Craglorn
Craglorn was ZOS's experiment with a more difficult zone. It was a disaster. It was a ghost town, never populated. No one played it. It had to be retooled to be more casual because no one played it. You never saw anyone in it.
Veteran Zones - Cadwell's Gold/Silver
Tried this, too. Guess what? Ghost town. No one played it. Your demographic seems to be around <200 players if I had to estimate based upon how many people actually turn up to play this content. This is versus the rest of the playerbase.
Other evidence?
Wildstar: Hardcore zones, dead on arrival. Devs are redesigning it to be more casual.
Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns: Almost killed ArenaNet, cash shop purchases dried up really fast. They had to issue a public apology and redesign the expansion to be casual.
Battleborn: Attracted a casual audience. Its developer couldn't let go of their hardcore eSports dream, now it's on life support.
Consider all of the above. ZOS isn't staffed by oblivious people. They're aware of failures like Wildstar and Heart of Thorns, they're also aware of their own failed hardcore experiments and chose a different path.
ZOS has already chosen to not cater to the hardcore with anything other than trials.
Take this to another game, please?
How many more threads are you going to make? Could the next one have a poll so we could make it painfully clear to you again?
Please. There have been so many threads about this, so much spin, so much nonsense.
The statistics say that this is financial suicide for any developer.
A developer needs money.
Harcore people do not pay anything more than the bare minimum (they see it as a job and it's the developer's purpose to reward them, rather than the other way around).
Casual players love to financially support games.
This would be bad for ZOS. ZOS knows this.
I'm trying to put this as simply as possible.
It's time to stop this.
Over 10 threads should be enough. Or do we need to go for 50? 100? What's the cut off point, here?
Noted.
But what is there for us end game players to do besides dungeons and trials? I've done all of them so many times that it's just boring to me to keep running the same content constantly.
Sometimes I just want to explore and do some questing but everything is just too easy even for newer players...
Craglron flopped because it was a group content zone only with minimum rewards.. and vet zones were forced upon and you couldn't even see the players from different factions.. What I'm asking is the ability to enter a different instance.. We could at least have this option for dlc zones only.
Even if this idea is completly bad we could atleast have more challenges for high level players in the zone besides world bosses.3 -
TheCyberDruid✭✭✭✭✭No.
No veteran player can't possibly test to see how challenging a game is to new players for one simple reason - they're not new.
You know the systems. You know what skills to use, in what order, and you already have the muscle memory down. No matter what "disadvantage" you give yourself, you still have the two largest advantages out there. Knowledge and experience.
This. I started playing 9 months ago and it was a learning curve that at some points was quite steep. I haven't played many MMORPGs before this one, so I kinda got the idea of sets. The skills and how to use them effectively took a while longer. Figuring out that 10 level lower gear is really bad to wear even if it 'makes the set' took a while too. Now I also feel that the overland content is too easy, but that comes from playing all kinds of content and learning the game. If I wouldn't have been killed by mobs with three people and delve bosses early on and then figured out how to beat them, I'm pretty certain I would have never bothered with the game any further and booked it under 'unplayable'. It's the early balance that seems 'far too easy' after playing the game for a couple of months.1 -
redshirt_49✭✭✭✭Zerowaffles wrote: »Sigh. Again. Really? Again? Again?
Well, I suppose if you've lost the argument in at least ten other threads, just try posting it again and spinning it a different way. The thing is is that this battle is lost. Please stop. Just take the argument to a different game. ZOS isn't interested. I'll explain why.
Harder Overland Zone -- Craglorn
Craglorn was ZOS's experiment with a more difficult zone. It was a disaster. It was a ghost town, never populated. No one played it. It had to be retooled to be more casual because no one played it. You never saw anyone in it.
Veteran Zones - Cadwell's Gold/Silver
Tried this, too. Guess what? Ghost town. No one played it. Your demographic seems to be around <200 players if I had to estimate based upon how many people actually turn up to play this content. This is versus the rest of the playerbase.
Other evidence?
Wildstar: Hardcore zones, dead on arrival. Devs are redesigning it to be more casual.
Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns: Almost killed ArenaNet, cash shop purchases dried up really fast. They had to issue a public apology and redesign the expansion to be casual.
Battleborn: Attracted a casual audience. Its developer couldn't let go of their hardcore eSports dream, now it's on life support.
Consider all of the above. ZOS isn't staffed by oblivious people. They're aware of failures like Wildstar and Heart of Thorns, they're also aware of their own failed hardcore experiments and chose a different path.
ZOS has already chosen to not cater to the hardcore with anything other than trials.
Take this to another game, please?
How many more threads are you going to make? Could the next one have a poll so we could make it painfully clear to you again?
Please. There have been so many threads about this, so much spin, so much nonsense.
The statistics say that this is financial suicide for any developer.
A developer needs money.
Harcore people do not pay anything more than the bare minimum (they see it as a job and it's the developer's purpose to reward them, rather than the other way around).
Casual players love to financially support games.
This would be bad for ZOS. ZOS knows this.
I'm trying to put this as simply as possible.
It's time to stop this.
Over 10 threads should be enough. Or do we need to go for 50? 100? What's the cut off point, here?
Noted.
But what is there for us end game players to do besides dungeons and trials? I've done all of them so many times that it's just boring to me to keep running the same content constantly.
Sometimes I just want to explore and do some questing but everything is just too easy even for newer players...
Craglron flopped because it was a group content zone only with minimum rewards.. and vet zones were forced upon and you couldn't even see the players from different factions.. What I'm asking is the ability to enter a different instance.. We could at least have this option for dlc zones only.
Even if this idea is completly bad we could atleast have more challenges for high level players in the zone besides world bosses.
ZOS could try this but I'd almost guarantee that unless it'd come with stuff for the munchkins and min-maxers to farm to death, noone would play that too. There just are not enough players interested in this sort of stuff to justify development on it anymore.0 -
idk✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Outside of the obvious lower level zones I did not find other zones more or less difficult when T1 came around. They have never been a challenge nor do I think they were intended to be a challenge.
EDIT: with the exception that I did get a little better at playing the game since the day it launched which made things easier but that has nothing to do with T1.Edited by idk on June 16, 2018 8:32PM1 -
TheShadowScout✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭
Exactly.Zerowaffles wrote: »...I tried testing to see how challenging the game is to new players...
No.
No veteran player can't possibly test to see how challenging a game is to new players for one simple reason - they're not new.
You know the systems. You know what skills to use, in what order, and you already have the muscle memory down. No matter what "disadvantage" you give yourself, you still have the two largest advantages out there. Knowledge and experience...
And that is why they made the overland content so darn easy... so the new players had a "buffer" while they gain that knowledge and experience, figure out what the skills do, realize that blocking -all- the heavy attacks is a good thing, etc.
And yes, I also agree that most new players don't want a challenge at this point... that comes later.
And when that time comes... well, its obvious it won't be found in the overland content unless you go at it naked and punch stuff, but most people go solo public dungeons, hunt world bosses, solo dolmen or go spelunking in craglorn dwelves... and then there is maelstrom runs, and joining the gank-fest in imperial city... and once you find a few friends, dungeons and trials are also an option.
Harder overland content on the other hand... they tried that with pre-OT craglorn, and it failed miserably. hardly anyone went there, back then. So they adjusted their strategy.
0 -
starkerealm✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Outside of the obvious lower level zones I did not find other zones more or less difficult when T1 came around. They have never been a challenge nor do I think they were intended to be a challenge.
EDIT: with the exception that I did get a little better at playing the game since the day it launched which made things easier but that has nothing to do with T1.
To be fair, I can think of more than one time pre-T1 when I had to walk someone through how to play in Stonefalls, Auridon, or Glenumbra zone, because they were griping about how difficult the game was. Since then I've had similar conversations on Vvardenfell from newbies getting side tracked by difficulty.
I mean, we talk about how nothing is hard anymore, but there are a lot of new players that are genuinely outmatched by basic overland mobs.0